Author: NDtex

As I enter into my thirty-third year on this earth, I certainly need and desire very little for my birthday as I get older. Time with my family and friends, some favorite foods, a couple of drinks, or maybe some time to just relax is all I really desire.

At some point, and I’m not sure when, Facebook hit on something I found rather brilliant. Attach a charity to your birthday and encourage people to donate as your present. I love it. It’s brilliant.

Unfortunately, something I do for charity every year doesn’t exactly plug in to that nice little feature: Extra Life.

In the last two years, I’ve taken part in Extra Life, a charity effort that takes my love of video games and turns it into a benefit for the Children’s Miracle Network. My drive will specifically benefit the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Oklahoma City in honor of Aven, son of family friends, who lost his life to Leukemia at just two years old.

If you are curious as to what Extra Life is and why I do this, take a look at the promo video I did for last year’s drive:

So, instead of Facebook’s birthday charity drive, I’m kicking off my 2018 Extra Life campaign. My goal is to raise $2,000, matching the mark I hit last year. If you’d like to get me a birthday present this year, let’s get the donations rolling. Your donations are 100% tax deductible and, much like last year, your donations will effect how I play during my drive…but we will get to that in a little bit.

Last year, I shared my love of my all-time favorite series, Final Fantasy. This year, I’m sharing a more recent favorite: Mass Effect. Mass Effect combines two things that I’m a gigantic nerd about: role-playing games with incredible stories and science-fiction.

What makes Mass Effect unique how the choices you make will span and radically alter an entire trilogy worth of games. I plan to take on that entire trilogy with my 24-hour charity stream at the end of the year featuring Mass Effect 3.

The Mass Effect series plays heavily not just choice, but the morality of those choices. Commander Shepard can either be a Paragon, the compassionate and just hero, or a Renegade, the ruthless anti-hero who will get the job done at any cost. Your donations will determine the morality I play as in a constant, year-long tug-of-war.

All donations ending in even numbers will go to the Paragon pool. All donations ending in odd numbers will go to the Renegade pool. The highest value will be how I play–no matter what. If the pools happen to be tied, the last donation’s alignment will serve as tie-breaker.

Make Me Pay

Much like last year, your donations can also mess with me during my playthrough (which was both a huge hit and highly entertaining). They return this year, but I’m sweetening the pot (much like Ty from The Solid Verbal encouraged last year): every death throughout the series equals a $5 donation out my own pocket.

I’m still working through the specifics because each game is a little different, but here are the tentative donation tiers to help guide your charity into my pain (which will lead to further charity):

$10-$19 – Ban Tech/Power of Ally

$20-$39 – Ban Tech/Power of Shepard (me)

$40-$49 – Ban Weapon of Ally

$50-$74 – Ban Weapon of Shepard (me)

$75-$99 – Ban First Aid (healing)

$100+ – Ban Unity (squad revive)

Game Over (Shepard Death) removes longest standing ban

I’m excited for this year’s effort. Right now, I’m working on replaying the trilogy to help plan out a schedule for streaming and to plan future polls. I’m hoping by late spring/early summer, I will be able to start this journey in earnest.

Follow the Journey

By far the best way to keep up with this crazy effort will be my Twitch channel. Live streams, as well as replays, will air here. Following the channel will allow you to opt in to email alerts for when a live stream or replay begins.

This year, I will also export clips to my YouTube channel. So if Twitch isn’t quite your cup of tea, you can check out the archive footage here as well.

Donate! By donating, I can keep in touch via email. As this is going to be one heck of a long journey, so many an update will be required.

You can also keep an eye out here (RSS feed) as well. I’ll be adding in a lot of stuff and making sure ndtex.com/extralife will serve as a useful hub going forward.

That sentence replaced my alarm clock one year ago, today. Less than 24 hours before the world’s most effective alarm went off, we were at the first of weekly doctor appointments before our son arrived. Less than 24 hours ago, we thought we had less than a month to finalize our preparations to become parents.

Finish the nursery. Make a decision on our pediatrician. Finalize our birth plan. Pack our delivery day overnight bags. Squeeze in one of those parenting classes. Perhaps enjoy a day or two of pre-parent life.

Instead, I found myself driving to the hospital (and smacking every speed bump way faster than I should have along the way) quickly learning what I like to call one of the primary laws of parenting: all of your “plans” are worthless, welcome to the chaos.

The next thing I knew, my wife and I were hearing confirmation that her water did indeed break and we would be having a baby within the next 24 hours. So much for that month of prep time.

That morning, my wife settled in for a long labor that wouldn’t end until the early morning hours the following day. Once the initial shock of “holy shit, this is happening” wore off and phone calls were made to family, I headed back home to pack some clothes and get the nursery and house ready for our new bundle of joy.

He wouldn’t be allowed to come home with us until nearly a week later. Even my last minute prep plans went to hell. Welcome to parenthood.

Most people mark the day of their firstborn’s birth as the day everything changed. While that is certainly true, personally, today marks the day that my world was truly flipped upside down. Not only was I scrambling to finish a month’s worth of final preparations into single day, but, throughout the day, I found myself reevaluating and re-identifying everything that made me, me.

A large part of my world revolved around writing and talking about Notre Dame football. To some extent, it still does, but it is no longer the large priority that it once was. I had warned my team in advance that I would be stepping back a bit after the birth of my son, but I had no idea at the time that I would more or less completely step down in September and hand over the leadership reigns.

I can’t even remember the last time that I wrote a post purely about football. My last podcast was after the national championship game this past January. At the time, I said it would be a winter break. Winter has now bled into summer.

At some level, I will still write. I love writing. At some level, I will still podcast. Playing radio host is a lot of fun. People, many of whom that I’ve never met in person, seem to enjoy it too.

But it’s all back at hobby level now. It’s no longer a borderline second job as it used to be.

Employee.

Work was mainly that thing that paid the bills. Maybe allowed some nice things here and there. I’ve always been motivated in moving my career forward, but once I knew I would become a dad, the way I looked at my job changed rather quickly.

My current job killed the product that I was working on and supporting. There were opportunities within the company to move to another position, but it felt like a lateral move at best. If I’m working my tail off, I better be moving forward, not sideways.

So I went job hunting. More accurately, I went career-hunting. My job was decent and even if I moved positions internally, it would still be a decent job. I got picky. Very picky. I even turned down a job offer that could’ve potentially made me more money than I was currently making.

The day my wife went into labor, I was waiting on new job offer. On the day my son was born, I got that offer. At the end of June, when my son was supposed to be born, I started.

I’ve never worked harder in my life. I travel a ton, something that I never thought I wanted to do in my career and, honestly, something I don’t really enjoy. However, it’s worth it. The opportunity was too good to turn down. I see more potential here than at any other job I’ve had before. All the travel and the long hours are worth it, especially since my time not on the road is spent at home.

My new job has probably killed more free time than becoming a dad; however, becoming a dad was a major motivation for making such a huge change in my life. I work for my family now. They are the main motivation for what I do and the sacrifices I make.

Gamer.

A new dad that still manages to be a serious gamer may be harder to find than a snipe on a hunt (and if you’ve never been snipe hunting, please hire me as your guide…it’ll be fun, promise!).

Remember all those plans I mentioned earlier? Part of those plans was one final binge in Final Fantasy XIV as their first major expansion, Heavensward, was set to come out on June 23rd. I pre-ordered the game to get access a week early. I “played” maybe a few hours that week at most. I only recently finished the main storyline of that expansion, almost a full year later. That then put me two full content patches behind.

And then there are other games that I foolishly ordered that haven’t even made it out of plastic wrap. I have purchased games on my Steam account that haven’t even been downloaded yet, much less played. I’ve lost count of how many games I’ve started but have yet to finish.

Because when it comes to a choice of staying up late or sneaking in some gaming time, I’m going the hell to bed about 90% of the time. Even if I’m on the road by myself.

A great example: I declared to my wife last Friday that I would stay up late and enjoy a few adult beverages. In the back of my mind, I also figured an hour or two of gaming. I watched TV in bed with a drink and feel asleep about 30 minutes after her.

My real gaming days are over for now. My filthy causal gaming days have now begun.

Husband.

“Marriage” and “team” are terms that you hear mixed a lot. The “team” mentality really came into play on this day, one year ago. It really hasn’t stopped since.

I went from focusing on spoiling my wife to trying to simply make her life easier. I’ve never been hated more by someone who loves me than after my son was born because hormones and lack of sleep is the worst cocktail known to man. I say this with all the love in my heart. It may sound terrible, but it is hilariously true.

And, to be fair, I’ve grown crazier by the day myself. I’ve gotten angrier at the dumbest things possible and my wife will end up catching some collateral damage.

Some days are more of a survival effort than others. Every now and then, we get some moments in which we can remind ourselves that we are still the same lovebirds that we’ve been for years.

Honestly, it’s hard to put into words. It’s a different dynamic that has seen us both grow as husband and wife in so many different ways.

Bottom line: I can’t see any way that I would survive this crazy ride without her. I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else either.

All of this started one year ago, today. It’s been harder than I could have ever imagined. It’s been better than I could have ever imagined.

Now, I have a single word in which I can identify with. A single word that can easily describe all my motivations and goals in my life.

Hello, fellow degenerates that flock to the alter of GAMBLOR, it’s that time of year once again. The Royal Rumble is nigh upon us, meaning that it’s time to place money down on a scripted event to see who will walk away with a nice $150 pot.

Or, as it has been since the last two years that I’ve run this, watching our money go straight to Eddie.

This year, it’s Eddie vs. All! The two time champ is overly cocky and confident, so it’s time to knock him off his perch.

We have six previous entrants in and I am looking for more people to join the fun. Here’s how this works:

We get people to sign up. Simply shot a tweet @ndtex and I will put you on the list. We keep this on Twitter because I’ll make a list for folks to follow to watch us lose our minds over this.

We have 6 entrants now, but we can up the total to 10 or 15. That way everyone gets an even amount of entrants. We aren’t doing 30 because having only one entrant is not very fun. Imagine watching Heath Slater being your only entrant. Sure, he’s amazing, but we know that’s not gonna happen.

If we have a number of entrants that don’t match the 10 or 15 number, they will be added to a wait list.

Each slot will cost $5. As of now, the 6 entrants will pay $25 each. If we get 10, the cost goes down to $15 and if we fill 15 slots, the cost will be only $10.

Like the Rumble, this is winner-take-all. The official WWE result we be what matters. So if your winner gets screwed and say, Vince walks out and says “NO THIS GUY WON”, you’ll know how Bret Hart felt.

If for some reason the match goes no-contest (I have no idea how, but, hey WWE logic), the winner will be determined by the entrant that eliminated the most competitors.

If the match is declared a tie, the pot will be split among each person that has each “winning” entrant. This means if three people “tie” and one person has two of those entrants, they receive two thirds of the pot and the remaining one-third will go to the other “winner”.

Your money will be due the Friday before the Rumble (Jan 22) via PayPal (roritter at gamil dot com) so I can find replacements if needed/notify people on the waiting list.

Entrants will be announced via a Periscope drawing on Saturday, Jan 23. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed.

This is a ton of fun, even if you are lighting money on fire (but, hey, better odds than Powerball!). Be sure to hit me up on Twitter @ndtex if you are interested and for the love of God, let’s not let Eddie win again this year.

For the first time since I was in high school, I was able to catch WWE RAW as it stopped in Dallas. Today, I had several different thoughts about the show and the WWE in general, leading me to dust this little personal corner of the internet off to put them down.

Now, this isn’t going to be a best/worst as Brandon Stroud does that already and does it far better than I could ever do. These are simply the major takeaways that I went home with last night.

So without further ado, here are the 12 things that I learned last night.

1. The PG Era Is Here to Stay

If you are one of those fans that yearn for the WWE to return to the edgier Attitude Era, I suggest you file that dream away indefinitely. While the WWE might sprinkle in a bit of the “good ‘ol days” here and there, the product has changed forever and the WWE would be stupid to kill the current path that it’s on.

The reason for this is simple: money. They are making a killing by being a more family-friendly product.

The last time I attended RAW, the crowd was mostly adults with teenagers sprinkled in. This time around, the kids were everywhere, decked head-to-toe in some cases with WWE merchandise.

As I was standing in line to purchase a single Daniel Bryan t-shirt, families were dropping hundreds of dollars at a time getting things for their kids. One family in front of me got each kid two different things and ran up a total of damn near $300. Another smaller family dropped over $100. Someone with only one kid had a similar $100 total as well.

Now, this may have been thrown off because it could have been Christmas come early for some kids, but I doubt it. Fans like me might grab just one piece, but kids want the fake belts, the fake Daniel Bryan beards, wristbands, replica Santino cobra (yes, that’s a thing), or a Cena foam hand along with the shirts.

It was incredible to watch. I always figured the WWE was making serious cash, but seeing the money fly like crazy last night was beyond what I thought.

As long as that gravy train continues, the PG era will remain.

2. Speaking of Shirts, Buy Them Online

I (wrongly) figured that the shirts would be $25 dollars at the show — basically, with the shipping cost removed. They were $30. I ended up saving only $1.98 by buying my shirt at the show instead of the WWE’s online shop.

The wait, and vastly limited selection, was not worth the meager savings at all. In fact, if I had bought multiple shirts, I would have likely saved money by ordering online.

So if you are going to a show, do yourself a favor and just order shirts well in advance and head straight to the beer line.

3. The Beer Vendor Was a Real Man of Genius

Not allowed to walk up and down the stands to hawk beer? No problem. Just plant yourself in front of the men’s room and watch the money roll in.

Timing bathroom breaks isn’t too hard during the show, especially if you are familiar with how an episode of RAW plays out, but you do pretty much have to go in and out to make it back in time and not miss anything. Having a beer vendor immediately outside to make my life even easier was just awesome.

I salute you, sir.

4. RAW Is Infinitely More Enjoyable Without These Idiots

Here’s the thing about a wrestling announce team: they have one job and that’s to help promote the talent in the ring and progress their stories. The team of Michael Cole, Jerry “The King” Lawler, and JBL haven’t done this in months.

Week to week they spend more time yukking it up or yelling at each other about things that have zero to do with what is going on in the ring or even the show as a whole. It completely takes away from the product at hand and can ruin otherwise incredible matches.

And that’s doubly so if the Divas are in the ring. They’ll make a series of stupid, sexist jokes or completely dismiss what’s going on in the ring altogether.

The end result is that you get three bumbling idiots that have the exact opposite effect on the product than what they are hired to do.

While I was watching the show live, I could actually focus on the story the talent was telling in the ring. I didn’t have some stupid joke distract me from what was going on in front of me.

It was great. It was fantastic. And if the WWE ever offers me a way to watch RAW without the announcers, I would do it in a heartbeat.

5. The Wrestlers Have More Fun When the Cameras Are Off

The best moment on RAW last night wasn’t televised.

During the Real Americans v Big E/Henry, the Texas crowd let Jack Swagger, OU alumnus, hear an awesome “OU SUCKS!” chant multiple times throughout the match. Henry responded with a “Hook ’em” signal during the match, but Swagger didn’t react at all.

Finally, during the commercial break in the middle of the match. Swagger responded to the chant by signaling O-U with his arms and then throwing down a “saw ’em off” sign.

It was quality heel work. The crowd got pissed and it was beautiful, but no one on TV saw it, sadly.

Likewise, during the Daniel Bryan/Randy Orton main event, Orton did some quality heel work as well. After Bryan took his header out of the ring triggering the commercial break, the referee called for medical attention to Orton who had a small cut over his eye — remember, PG era means limiting blood.

Chants of “Randy’s Fragile” started and then Orton requested water which got the crowd further on his case. As Bryan continued to sell being dead on the outside Randy rolled in the ring and started taking the cockiest water break of all time, posing and taunting the crowd. The crowd stopped the mocking and just booed the living hell out of him.

Again, glorious work, but I’m sad it wasn’t on TV. I know the WWE App now supposedly shows these things, but I can’t help but wonder if they have a bit more freedom to improv when the red light isn’t on.

6. Commercial Breaks in the Middle of Intros Are Super Awkward

C.M. Punk and HBK are having a war of words in the ring and the crowd is getting hot. HBK introduces Punk’s opponent and Sierra, Hotel, India, Echo, Lima, Deltaand the crowd just loses their damn minds. The Shield makes their way through the crowd and the ref is having to restrain Punk because he is so pissed and TO HELL WITH IT I’M GOING TO FIGHT ALL THREE AGAIN BY MYSELF.

And then the lights are cut, the music stops, we are in commercial break and the crowd just dies.

If commercial breaks during matches brought me the greatest joy, the commercial breaks during intros were the the balancing act to suck the life out of me. I compare it to being at a ND game, ND getting a huge turnover and then OH HEY NBC TV TIMEOUT.

It sucks and those breaks felt like the longest ever.

However, there is supplemental hilarity of everyone picking right back up where they left off as soon as the lights come back up. It’s like someone flipped a switch in their brains that activates some kind of “activate kayfabe NOW” reaction.

Seeing that all live though is just incredibly awkward. The best wrestling matches in my opinion are accompanied by hot crowds just ready to burst. I’m not sure why the WWE thinks this makes for good TV and I would be happy to see this practice stop forever.

7. C.M. Punk Holds the Crowd in the Palm of His Hand

C.M. Punk may not be dropping the same pipebombs that he did during the Summer of Punk, but he can still definitely claim “Best in the World” especially when it comes to working a crowd. His best work last night was when he didn’t have a mic in his hand.

Punk spent very little time in the ring during his tag match, but while on the apron the guy was doing so many wonderful little things that just made the match awesome. Whether it was acknowledging chants, leading cheers/clapping, or taunting the Shield he was glorious.

Punk wouldn’t allow the crowd to stay completely silent in the match. If he felt the crowd was dead, he’d find a way to get people back into it. From a fan perspective, it made the match far more enjoyable to watch since we were heavily involved the whole time.

I’m sure the majority of this was completely off camera, which is a shame. Much like I would prefer to have a way to watch RAW without the trio of idiots, I want a full ring camera angle that I can watch full-time to enjoy the little things like this.

8. C.M. Punk’s Top Rope Elbow Is Hot Garbage

I’m not sure when this now signature move started sucking, but it looked simply awful live last night. It basically looked like Punk fell down elbow first instead of jumping and really killed some of the buzz I had during the match.

(Bitching about announce team aside: During the TLC PPV on Sunday, after a Punk elbow and two-count, Cole asked “HOW MANY PEOPLE HAS PUNK PUT AWAY WITH THAT ELBOW?” Answer: none. Stop sucking at your job, Cole.)

Perhaps after he botched the ‘Mania elbow he’s a little concerned with going all out with it. That’s fine, retire the move. He does too many other things well than to make a mess out of this over and over again.

9. Sometimes Wrestling Fans Are the Worst

Want to know what’s fun? Explaining to your wonderful non-wrestling fan fiancee what the “we want puppies” chant means during the Divas match. They do this because they never grew up from the Attitude Era that featured King screaming this euphemism for boobies every time a woman came on screen.

Thankfully, the “puppies” chant was isolated to two idiots; however, this kind of goes back to point #4. If the announcing team actually gives a rat’s ass about the Divas while they’re in the ring, perhaps fans get the message that the Divas aren’t there purely for fans to get a potential peep-show.

A fan will realistically get, at best, one shot a year to make their voices heard at an event. So of course, they will do what has been deemed funny/appropriate by not just the talent, but the announcers who are continuously giving feedback to what the wrestlers do and, in reality, are the fans’ best connection to what’s happening.

This isn’t to say a wrestling fan can’t find the Divas sexy (because they most definitely are), but they aren’t out there to strip, they are there to wrestle. If it isn’t your cup of tea, cool, go take a bathroom break. Don’t open your mouth like an idiot and give wrestling fandom a bad name.

10. Runner Up for Worst Fans: “Smarks”

I say “smarks” in quotations because these fans aren’t really a smart mark, but someone that thinks being an aping smartass makes them one. A group of these wannabe-smarks tried to start a “JBL” chant during the Punk/Usos v Shield match. They did this because they watched the post-Wrestlemania RAW crowd do this and it was absolutely hilarious so because LOGIC they did this last night.

The post-Mania crowd is full of legit smarks and what they did worked because they were witnessing a God-awful Orton/Shamus match. The match sucked, neither wrestler looked like they cared, and the crowd noticed they weren’t even paying attention to them so they shat all over the match in very appropriate fashion.

Hilariously enough, that same crowd tried to do something similar to John Cena, a favorite target of any smark (myself included), but Cena played to the chants and got them to laugh. For the rest of the match, they stayed engaged in what was going on in front of them.

Last night, the Punk/Usos v Shield match was quality. I can understand that it might have gone too long for some folks as the pace was a bit slower than other matches (my fiancee in particular got bored a bit), but all the wrestlers were actively playing to the crowd and putting on something that was solid.

Doing smartass chants during legitimately good matches just makes you look stupid. Stop. Save it for something that is truly awful and worthy of your disdain.

Dallas got treated to one of the best RAWs I’ve seen in a while. Outside of Tensai getting smashed in a minute and the Divas match being meh RAW-filler (save for Tamina re-arranging Nikki Bella’s face), we got some simply amazing matches. There was really no place for those stupid chants.

11. Best Wrestling Fans: Kids

Sitting directly behind me was a group of three kids and there were several more around my section. I was slightly worried that they would just be “OMG CENA” all night long, but no, these kids were there to watch the show and enjoy every moment of it.

One of the other highlights of my night was listening to these kids completely lose their minds during the Bryan/Orton main event. When Bryan made a charge back into the match and got a series of near falls, these kids just flipped out on every two count.

It was glorious and another reason why the PG era isn’t going anywhere. Fans like me that have grown up and seen nearly every possible swerve and far too many wrestling matches, knew that there was no way in hell Bryan was winning that match. Sure I got excited into hoping I was wrong, but the reality was always in the back of my mind. The kids though eat every moment up and anything is possible because they haven’t been poisoned by years of crappy story lines and Dusty finishes.

Added bonus, the kids got into arguments on who started “Daniel Bryan” and “YES!” chants first. Spoiler: none of them started any chant.

12. Daniel Bryan Is Stupidly Over Right Now

I WELCOME MY NEW BEARDED OVERLORD!

Here’s the thing, Bryan has always been held in high regard by the smark crowd. He has even turned the corner on winning crowds over regularly as of late. After going to this live show though, he has captured the final demographic that matters the most.

The kids.

As I waited in line to get into the show, I saw a kid, head-to-toe in Cena gear. I’m talking hat, shirt, wristbands, and he wore cargo shorts because CENA. He had a sign: “YES! YES! YES! THE REAL FACE OF WWE DANIEL BRYAN!”

As much as I’ve hated the new WWE shirt designs for Bryan which proudly display a goat, originally used as a Bryan insult, I realized why the WWE did that as soon as I got to the merch booth. The sizes were Adult: Medium and Large and Kids: Medium, Large, and XL — the same sizes as all Cena shirts. The “Respect the Beard” shirt that I got had no kids sizes and also included XL & XXL. The goat bit allows Bryan to be marketed to kids and they are eating it up, along with the fake beards, YES! rally towels, and YES! wristbands.

They were all selling quite well while I was at the booth too. The kids aren’t just chanting “YES!” because it’s fun, but they are actively cheering him on and buying his merchandise.

As I posted earlier today at Her Loyal Sons, I will now be doing all of my ND and college football blogging over there instead of this little corner of the internet that I have called my home. Ironically enough, just a couple of weeks after I decided to re-purpose the entire site to be dedicated to said topic!

When DMQ approached me with the idea, I was both a tad shocked and very much honored that he and Biscuit thought I would be a great addition to their site. HLS easily has a much bigger higher reader volume than my site by far and I am very much looking forward to having a new audience read my work.

To my friends, family, and anyone else that has found my posts from any other source whether it be Twitter, Facebook, NDN, or Google, thanks for reading and spreading my work around. I sure hope all of you will be following me over to HLS and continue to read my work as well as everyone else that does some fantastic posting over there (yes, even Poot).

And seriously, if you haven’t been reading HLS before, you’ve been missing out and you need to rectify this immediately.

I honestly have no idea what I will be doing with this site and blog in the future, but I will definitely keep it around to archive my posts. I doubt that I’ll be able to keep up two blogs, but hey, who knows. For now though, I will for sure be trying to continue to help build the HLS community just like I did for this site (but likely with a lot less tinkering because I don’t think DMQ will let me play with everything!).

I’m very excited and can’t wait to dig in as a member of HLS. I sure hope DMQ and Biscuit know what they’ve gotten themselves into!

It’s time for another round of questions in the Irish Blogger Gathering. This week’s edition is hosted by the ND football think tank known as the Irish Round Table. Make sure to head to their site and check out their host post as well as the rest of the responses from the IBG that will be linked there.

1) Excluding Aaron Lynch, who is your top newcomer of the year thus far (freshman or player that hadn’t seen much playing time in prior seasons)?

Mr. Irish Chocolate himself, Louis Nix. The 340 pounder has been a large (hey look a pun!) reason why the Irish run defense has improved so much. The Irish now rank 25th in the country in rushing yards given up per game at 93. The only rushing TD they’ve given up is the freak fumble scoop by Denard Robinson.

The battle against the run starts up front. In the 3-4, you need your line to fill in as many gaps as possible, suck up O-line blocks, and let your LBs make plays. The nose tackle is right at the point of attack for nearly every inside run, making that position absolutely vital to the 3-4’s success.

Without Nix’s contributions, there is no way this defense would be where it is right now. He’s done a fantastic job and the scary part is that he will get better.

2) We asked our Twitter followers for questions to use in this week’s IBG. Here’s a sampling of what we got. Choose ONE and answer:

Yeah, I’m totally going to cheat here and answer all of them. Some of these are just begging for a response.

@TheSubwayDomer: If the #NDFB quarterbacks were female super models, who would they be? What would they endorse? #IBG

Ok, I lied, not answering this one. The hell kind of question is this? I expect better, Subway Domer. Shame on you!

@PerrasW01: Why has the #NDFB program gone to hell since Holtz left?

Bob Davie and Ty Willingham. I’m dead serious. Davie started us on a decline and Ty did so much damage to this team by just failing to recruit (and coach, run a practice, stay away from the golf course…) that we had such gaping holes that Charlie Weis simply could not plug up in time nor could he have hoped to.

Regarding Weis, he just didn’t know how to transition from a pro coordinator to a college head coach. And, really, you can’t “schematic advantage” your way out of having no offensive or defensive line among other nice talent gaps that Ty left behind.

Now we have been to three BCS bowls since Lou. Granted, we’ve won zero, but considering we are showing signs of recovery (yes there are signs), I wouldn’t call that completely going to hell.

If you want to talk about going to hell, I’d take a nice look at Miami. It could be a lot worse.

@rpleary: You know that sign that says “Play Like a Champion Today”? What does our offense have against the sign?

Is this a serious question?

Sure the offense isn’t perfect; in fact, we are far from it, but I haven’t seen this team quit. Despite continuing to shoot themselves in the foot, they come back out and make a game out of it and in the case of Sparty, they won comfortably and in the case of Pitt they won a game they should’ve lost.

Maybe they aren’t playing to perfection, but I don’t believe that’s what the sign asks for.

@chadros: Based on our offense’s performance to date, is the current play calling mix(run vs. pass) the right one? Should we be running the ball more?

126 runs and 155 passes is our current spread. Considering college football counts sacks as rushing plays, I’ll go ahead and change that to 121/160 run/pass since we’ve given up five sacks total. That’s a 56.9% pass inclination.

Let’s also remember that the second half of the USF game was pass, pass, pass, and pass some more. So let’s remove that as a statistical outlier since that’s obviously outside the game plan.

That removes 6 rushes and 35, yes, 35 passes. We are left with a run/pass of 116/125, resulting in a 51.9% pass inclination.

That sure looks like a balanced offense to me. Can we finally put this argument to rest? Please? For my sanity?

@yetiisready: Will this be the week we see the “change-up package” AKA “the Leprecat?”

We saw this week one, I believe. I think Kelly is more concerned with Rees getting his act together rather than throwing in additional packages like the wildcat. Honestly, I wouldn’t expect to see it.
3) If you could have 1 play back this season, what play would you want a do-over? How would that have changed a game’s outcome? Are you sure your do-over would work in ND’s favor?

The Jonas Gray fumble on the first drive of the season. That may not just change the game, that may just change some of the season. Who knows, the Irish could’ve ended that drive with all the confidence in the world and Crist could be our QB.

I can’t state any of that for certain, but there is no doubt that everyone on the sideline had some thought as most fans did: “Yep, here we go again”. The Irish have had to rebuild their confidence from drive one and that is no way to get a season going.

4) In 140 characters or less “tweet” a summary of the season so far. Bonus points for hashtags or mentions.

Well this one’s easy: #NDFBIsDeterminedToKillMe

5) Lou Holtz asked 3 basic questions of every player and coach, “Can I trust you? Are you committed? Do you care about me?” In your opinion, which player would every other player give a resounding “Yes” to each of these questions and why?

I would have to go with Manti Te’o. Just read Eric Hansen’s fantastic piece on him in the South Bend Tribune (and ignore the Creed Lryics). I honestly couldn’t see any player trying to deny that Te’o doesn’t fit Lou’s questions or that he wouldn’t be the “right kinda guy” that Kelly looks for.

6) Jumbotron. Good idea or terrible idea. What would you do to make it a great idea?

It’s a useless argument that needs to go away. I am so indifferent on this it’s not even funny.

Sure, it’s great that ND doesn’t have one as far as being super-traditional goes, but in our current days of long NBC timeouts that put the crowd in a lull, I can easily see arguments for it.

Personally, if ND put one up, I wouldn’t be worried about it. I would have to believe that ND would use it well much like they did in Yankee Stadium.

7) Every week we try to fire up the masses with a “Fire It Up” video. Sometimes these videos are inspirational ballads of kick-ass Notre Dame football. Sometimes they are of a Japanese game show with dudes getting hit in the junk. Submit a video to Fire Up the Irish faithful for the Purdue game.

I’m more or less amusing myself because this is a bit a local sports station does so I expect very few ND fans will get. Oh well, screw it, I’m doing it anyways (along with some bonus inspiration!):